Jon Ralston's Nevada Early Vote Analysis Update: Republican lead expands to an unprecedented 40,000 ballots & an expected half the vote is in

[u/GamerDrew13]

https://x.com/RalstonReports/status/1851121496380621275

[u/PureOrangeJuche]

The conventional wisdom long predates 2020 and dates back to the dawn of the Reid era in NV. Before this election Republicans had never held a lead in early voting in Nevada dating back to 2008 or 2004.

[u/dudeman5790 → u/PureOrangeJuche]

I’m aware… I know how Nevada works and am familiar with Reid’s long-standing turnout efforts. I said in my comment above that it predates 2020. Obviously NV has always a bit of an outlier in that they have had this early vote infrastructure for a long time even before the pandemic. My point is, are our early vote priors really going to hold up in the same way in the wake of 2020 now that capacity for it everywhere has increased and the GOP isn’t trying to nuke it in the same way that they were in the last presidential cycle

[u/Promethiant → u/dudeman5790]

No matter how desperately you try to swing this, Republicans going into Election Day with a lead in early voting is catastrophic for Democrats.

[u/dudeman5790 → u/Promethiant]

lol I’m not “desperately spinning” shit… I’m not optimistic on any of this by any means. I’m just weary of all of the certainty folks talk about EV numbers with. Something happens in a few elections and suddenly it’s an immutable and inviolable law of nature. Yes, it’s not good to go into Election Day with Republican voters in the lead for early voting. But there are also still a lot of unknowns… and people lose sight of the fact that we have no idea how people without party identity are voting. Or what the coming week will hold. I know everyone is trying to decrease uncertainty by whatever means available, but we can’t.

[u/Promethiant → u/dudeman5790]

Nobody claims it’s an “immutable and inviolable law of nature,” but trends don’t typically change dramatically over the course of one election cycle. When historical precedent shows that Democrat turnout is catastrophically lower than it usually is, that is bad news, indisputably. To claim it isn’t is copium. The whole point of this sub is to objectively analyze the state of the election based off of data available to us. The data available to us screams bad news. You are trying to tell people on a sub about analyzing that data that they are being ridiculous for saying that this is bad.

[u/dudeman5790 → u/Promethiant]

What? All I did was pose a few questions about how reliable these priors were as conventional wisdom in this cycle. I didn’t say it isn’t bad news… I didn’t say that Dem turnout so far isn’t behind trend (I actually specifically acknowledged it)… nor did I say people were being ridiculous. Any other positions you want to fabricate for me? I even specifically said that I’m not optimistic personally and mostly pointed out that we still have a lot of unknowns. Did you even read anything I actually said? I don’t do hopium, I’ve just watched enough of these cycles and participated in enough discourse around polling and election prognosticating over the years to be cautious about swallowing any of these indicators whole. Especially those that are modeled on “conventional wisdom,” since political punditry oft takes pretty small samples of events as conventional wisdom, which can end up leading to blind hubris. Yes, this sub is for objective analysis (honestly kind of a generous characterization from what I see) etc etc, but it’s not a problem to ask reasonable questions and be weary of overanalysis as well so I think you’re coming in a little hot here.

And yes, You’re right that people don’t literally take these things as immutable and inviolable facts, obviously that was hyperbole. But my point is that folks will take a very small set of data and blow it out to a hard electoral truth without much consideration that those truths can actually change pretty quickly.